Donat Ravaillac
| In office | to 1644 AN |
| Predecessor | Lord Lewis (as Prime Minister) |
| Successor | Augustus Eliphas |
| Other offices | Governor-General of Monovia Lieutenant-Governor of the Protectorate of Hammish Monovia Minister of the Homeland Deputy Prime Minister Member for the Protectorate of United Monovia |
| Born | c. 1596 AN |
| Died | 1644 AN (aged 48) New Kirrie, Commonwealth of Hamland |
| Cause of death | Assassination |
| Political party | Reform Party of Hamland |
| Spouse | Eva |
| Children | Aurèle Regina, afterward Queen Elizabeth I Judith |
| House | House of Ravaillac |
| Religion | Church of Alexandria |
| Seat | Blanchefort, Zurich, Monovia |
| Wars | Hammish Civil War |
Donat Ravaillac (c. 1596 AN to 1644 AN) was a Hammish politician and colonial administrator who governed Monovia as Governor-General, founded the Reform Party of Hamland, and served as the last civilian head of government of the Commonwealth of Hamland, first as Deputy Prime Minister and afterward as Interim Prime Minister at the head of the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland. He was the founder of the House of Ravaillac and the father of Queen Elizabeth I of Caputia.
Ravaillac came of an Alexandrian family settled in Monovia and in Hamland Proper, and held the Hammish colonial offices of Lieutenant-Governor and afterward Governor-General of Monovia. From the Governor's Mansion at Zurich he announced the founding of the Reform Party, a center-right party formed against the Hamland National Party, and he introduced the Province of United Monovia Bill, which sought to raise Monovia from a protectorate to a full province of the Commonwealth. When Prime Minister Lord Lewis and the Seneschal Juan Teaodir both vanished from public life, Ravaillac, as the sole surviving member of the Hammish government, issued Order 001, declared a national state of emergency, and took office as Interim Prime Minister at the behest of the Commonwealth's political parties, its military and its regional governments.
His promises of new elections and constitutional reform set him against the generals who sat with him on the Council of State, and after the death of his chief negotiator Gerardo Lopez the military officers held practical control of the country. Ravaillac was shot by a sniper at a military review at New Kirrie in 1644 AN, at the age of forty-eight; responsibility was disputed at the time between the military and the National Salvation Front. The killing reopened the Hammish Civil War and brought General Augustus Eliphas to power. Ravaillac's daughter Regina led the Ravaillac Loyalists through the remainder of the war and was afterward invested as Queen Elizabeth I of Caputia, whose Royal Family the Rothborne Family Pact of 1661 AN defined as the descendants of Donat.
Family and origins
The Ravaillacs were Alexandrian immigrants who settled in Monovia and in Hamland Proper, where they acquired extensive undeveloped land, and they professed the faith of the Church of Alexandria and continued to do so after settling into Hammish society. By Ravaillac's generation the family had become a Hammish office-holding house with an Alexandrian inheritance.
His footing in Monovia came through his wife, Eva, whose Monovian gentry line gave its name to Blanchefort, the Governor-General's residence at Zurich. The castle in the arms of the House of Ravaillac represents Blanchefort. The couple had three children: their eldest son and heir Aurèle, born about 1632 AN; their daughter Regina, born about 1636 AN; and their younger daughter Judith, born about 1640 AN.
Governor-General of Monovia
Ravaillac was granted the office of Lieutenant-Governor of the Protectorate of Hammish Monovia, styled His Honor with the honorific The Honorable, and afterward became Governor-General of Monovia. He sat in the Hammish legislature as the member for the Protectorate of United Monovia.
In an allocation of the Hammish overseas governorships, his house took the Protectorate of United Monovia and Villa Levi, a colony founded by the Israati businessman Benjamin Levi and vacant since he left Hammish public life; the Realm of Haifa passed at the same time to the House of Meir.
Villa Levi did not stay with the house. Signing as Minister of the Homeland and Governor of Hammish-Monovia, Ravaillac concluded the Treaty of Bel-Air with the Greater Pallisican Trade Association, the first article of which ceded Villa Levi in perpetuity together with Passas and the Hammish overseas colonies; in return, the Commonwealth received the Region of the Northern Anterran Isles and the Isle of Eastern Rey. The overseas standing of the house rested on Monovia alone thereafter.
Reform Party of Hamland
From the Governor's Mansion at Zurich, Ravaillac announced the founding of the Reform Party of Hamland, a center-right party formed against the Hamland National Party and what he called "a game of musical chairs among the nation's elite". Forza Monoviana, the Monovian right-wing party led by Jean Vargas, merged into it at Blanchefort, and the combined party went into the Hammish constitutional elections that followed expecting a supermajority.
Ravaillac also introduced the Province of United Monovia Bill, which sought to raise Monovia from a protectorate to a full province of the Commonwealth and which gave the territory the name his house used thereafter. The bill did not become law, and Monovia remained a protectorate of the Commonwealth.
Deputy Prime Minister and the Lewis succession
When Lord Lewis was elected Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, he invited Ravaillac to serve as Deputy Prime Minister together with any further post he wished to hold. Lewis, the founding sovereign figure of Hamland and head of the Miller dynasty, attended to the Commonwealth intermittently, and in his final addresses to the nation he proposed that the country be reconstituted with Ravaillac as Prime Minister. Lewis did not govern again. Ravaillac's own reply accepted the designation but asked the Chachis Del Nutra, the Commonwealth Parliament, to confirm him in the office rather than let him assume it on that authority alone.
Parliament never answered. After more than four months in which neither Prime Minister Lewis nor the Seneschal Juan Teaodir was heard from, and after a search by the intelligence services, the military, and the national police had failed to find either man, Ravaillac, then Minister of the Homeland and by then the sole surviving member of the Hammish government, issued Order 001 reciting their prolonged absences, declared a national state of emergency and suspended the constitution. He acted at the behest of the Commonwealth's political parties, its military and its regional governments. Provisional Constitutional Order 001 made him Interim Prime Minister at the head of the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland. There was some armed opposition from groups that held the measure to be a coup, and opponents of the Council called the order a usurpation; the emergency was otherwise generally welcomed, and his defenders answer that his reply to Lewis had asked for parliamentary confirmation.
Interim Prime Minister
The Council of State was afterward folded into the National Provisional Authority, with Ravaillac as Interim Prime Minister. He undertook to hold new elections and to propose the constitutional reforms needed to replace Teaodir, and he met resistance from the military leaders, Augustus Eliphas foremost among them. Where Ravaillac answered the unrest in Haifa, Israat, and Neo Patrova with mediation, the generals pressed for force, and the two sides clashed over the army's pacification of Haifa.
Eliphas directed a campaign that secretly funded and instigated a series of armed revolts by the Order of Rochefort against the government. The revolts ended when Ravaillac met the Order at New Kirrie and gave assurances that elections for a new Parliament would proceed.
The balance between the civilian and military halves of the government did not survive the suspicious death of Gerardo Lopez, a popular leader from San Luis de Hamlandia and one of Ravaillac's chief negotiators. After Lopez died, the military officers held practical control of the country, and Ravaillac served as the unwilling face of their government; the military obstructed the independent investigation he opened into the killing. The National Salvation Front formed in opposition to the Council of State.
Assassination
At a military review held at New Kirrie in 1644 AN to mark the pacification of Haifa and to send off troops for Israat and Anglia, Ravaillac was shot by a sniper as Air Force jets passed overhead during his speech and distracted the crowd. Bombs detonated across the city, destroying the Prime Minister's Residence and cutting the roads out of New Kirrie. Ravaillac and ten others were killed, and the Alexandrian ambassador Josef Droz was wounded; the Interim Prime Minister was airlifted to a military hospital and declared dead on arrival, at the age of forty-eight.
Contemporary reporting recorded responsibility as disputed: his own loyalists held that the military had arranged both the killing and the rise of General Augustus Eliphas, while other accounts laid it to the National Salvation Front. The Hammish Civil War had been nearing its end; the assassination reopened it, and Eliphas governed under martial law for nearly the whole of the nine years that followed. In the purge of the National Provisional Authority that came after, Ravaillac's loyalists and aides were removed from their posts and arrested, and his son Aurèle, then about twelve years old, was killed in the reprisals. The killing extinguished the senior male line of the house and left Regina, a child of about eight, as its heir.
Edmund Gaugin, a Hammish journalist and filmmaker who had been a close friend of Ravaillac and stood godfather to Regina, took her out of New Kirrie at the risk of his own life to Potola, afterward Gainsborough, in what became Caputia; the city grew into a sanctuary for the Ravaillac Loyalists. The Authority treated Gaugin as a traitor, and he carried his family into exile.
Legacy
Regina Ravaillac succeeded her father as Governor-General of Monovia, led the Ravaillac Loyalists through the remainder of the Hammish Civil War, was offered the crown of the Commonwealth's successor state, and was invested in 1653 AN as Queen Elizabeth I of Caputia. Rather than continue the Ravaillac name, she established a new reigning house under the name Rothborne, but the Rothborne Family Pact of 1661 AN defined the Royal Family of Caputia as the descendants of Donat, and the Most Noble Order of the Melusine she founded carries the motto Vincit Semper Veritas on the same theme of truth as her father's house motto, An veritas, an nihil.
His premiership became the dividing line in the successor kingdom's treaty law. Caputia did not regard itself as heir to many of the old Hammish agreements and reviewed which of them had been valid before his installation as Interim Prime Minister; the Treaty of Bel-Air he had signed himself, at the cost of Villa Levi, was among those it continued to honor.
His daughter Judith lived through the war, was afterward created a Caputian peeress, and became the ancestress of the cadet branch through which the Ravaillac name survived.
As of 1758 AN the name survives chiefly in toponymy. Ravaillac, the capital of New Caputia in Nouvelle Alexandrie, is a cultural center for the descendants of the Caputian diaspora, and in Amaland the municipality of Donat's Hamlet is named for Ravaillac and the municipality of Ravaillac for his house. Through his granddaughter's line, the descent reaches Inti, Duke of Vilcabamba, born in 1755 AN, the fifth generation in descent from him.
